Page:Once a Week Jul - Dec 1859.pdf/416

12, 1859.]

I decline to name the income on which Emma Maria and I married, lest the statement should have a tendency to re-open in these pages or elsewhere a certain discussion which attracted a good deal of attention some little time ago. It is sufficient for my purpose to declare, that its amount was such as to render us desirous of so arranging our prospective household affairs, as to avoid all expense not! absolutely necessary for comfort and propriety of appearance. With reference to such arrangements our mutual friends and relatives favoured us with a good deal of advice; and as there was considerable difference in the opinions expressed, rendering it impossible for us, with the best intentions in the world, to follow everyone’s counsel, I need scarcely say that we managed to offend, more or less, about nine in every ten of those who were good enough to “take an interest in our welfare.”

There was one point, however, on which a remarkable unanimity of opinion appeared to subsist: that point was “servants.” It was demon- strated that we coiddn’t get along at all with only one, and, further, that we couldn’t possibly afford to keep two. This would at first sight appear rather a dilemma; not so, however. Two servants “proper“ being clearly proved unattainable, the alternative was as clearly proved to be one, and “a page.” We were informed that an average female servant, at average wages, cost from thirty-five to forty pounds a-year; but that a page — buttoned and ornamental to open the door and wait at table, unbuttoned and useful to clean knives and shoes, and so forth — was an article almost costless, and quite priceless, to young housekeepers.

I must affirm, that I did not see the advantages of the proposed functionary in quite so strong a light as some of our advisers, and that it was more in deference to the opinions of others, the parents and guardians of my youth, than of my own free will, that I was induced to try the experiment. And oh! if I had had the smallest idea of what I was preparing for myself and Emma Maria, I would have quarreled with every relative 1 possessed in the world, rather than have taken the course I did. If the recital of a few of my miserable experiences (a very few, for a volume of this periodical might be filled without exhausting the subject) be the means of preventing any young couple from treading the same dreary path, I shall be amply rewarded. Oh, my young friends, if you would be happy, remain pageless!

Well, having settled upon keeping a page, the next question was how to procure one: and here an aunt of Emma Maria’s (from whom she had expectations, never, alas! fulfilled) stepped forward. This old lady took an interest in an orphan asylum, the pupils of which being put out to